Among the Imposters

Twenty One

Luke could hear someone crashing through the woods behind him, but he didn’t look back. He’d run into the darkest part of the woods, and it took all his concen— tration to dodge the tree limbs that seemed to reach down out of nowhere. In fact, if Luke really wanted to terrify himself, he could think of those tree limbs as witches’ arms, ghouls’ fingers. He wasn’t used to running through woods at night. Back home, when he’d gone outside after dark, it had mostly been for catching lightning bugs in the backyard, playing moonlight kick ball with his brothers— innocent fun.

He’d been so young, back then, back home.

He forced himself to run faster, but whoever was behind him seemed to be catching up. Luke zigzagged, because he’d read once that that was how rabbits escaped their predators. Then he slammed into a tree. He screamed in pain, and reeled backwards.

A dark shape pounced. Before he knew it, Luke was pinned to the ground.

Luke remembered another time he’d been tackled: the first time he’d crept into Jen’s house. He made a noise, and the next thing he knew, she had him facedown in the carpet. And they’d become friends.

This wasn’t Jen.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice hissed in his ear. Jackal boy’s. “You go back now, during Indoctrination, and they’ll catch you. They’ll know. And then they’ll come looking for the rest of us.”

Indoctrination? Luke guessed that jackal boy meant the evening lecture. The name made sense — the lecture was always about how wonderful the Government was. But Luke hadn’t even thought about what he was running toward. He was just running away

“Who will catch me?” he asked. “The only ones who watch are the hall monitors. And they all report to you, right?”

“You got it,” jackal boy said. He sounded pleased. “1 worked hard setting up that system. The teachers didn’t like hall duty, anyway. And now—”

“You can get away with anything, can’t you?” Luke asked. “Unless I tell.”

He didn’t know what possessed him to make that threat. Maybe it was just habit — after twelve years of being the youngest brother, he knew the power of tattling.

And he knew how easily it could backfire.

“Make you a deal,” Luke said quickly. “Let me up, and I won’t go back now. Answer some questions for me, and I won’t tell. I’ll keep your secrets.”

Jackal boy seemed to be considering. Finally, he said, “Okay.”

Luke scrambled up and pulled away He rubbed the side of his face. He wasn’t sure if it was sore from hitting the tree or from being slammed against the ground. His hand came away wet.

“I’m bleeding,” he said accusingly.

“You’ll have to hide it,” jackal boy said. “Are you good at hiding?”

Luke shrugged away the question. He knew jackal boy was really asking something else. But Luke wasn’t ready to answer.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Luke asked.

“Which one?” jackal boy asked. “If you look at the school records, I’m Scott Renault. Out here, I’m Jason.”

“One of those names is fake,” Luke said.

Somewhere in the woods, an owl hooted. Luke waited. Finally, jackal boy answered, softly, “Yes.”

“Your friends all have fake names, too,” Luke said.

“Yes.” No hesitation.

“You’re all third children who have come out of hiding with fake I.D. cards,” Luke said.

“Exnays,” jackal boy said.

“Is that what that means?” Luke asked.

“You didn’t know?” jackal boy asked. “Where have you been all your life?”

Luke decided not to answer that question, either.

‘And fonrols—” he started. a — are any third children, hiding or not”

“Why does everyone at school call each other those names?” Luke asked. “Is everyone here an exnay?”

In the dark, Luke could barely see jackal boy shaking his head.

“Haven’t kids called each other exnays and fonrols at the other schools you’ve been to? All the. other places you’ve ever lived? Some say in the beginning the Government paid people to use ‘fonrol’ and ‘exnay’ as swear words. On TV, and stuff Then those words were forbidden in public broadcast, which just meant that people used them more in private. They wanted to make sure that everyone thought of third children as terrible.”

Luke wondered why Jen had never told him about that.

“Maybe I’ve never been to any other schools,” Luke said cautiously He’d said “maybe.” He could still deny everything if he wanted.

Jackal boy laughed, openmouthed. His teeth glinted in the moonlight.

“Why don’t you just come out and admit it?” he asked. “You’re an exnay, too. I know it”.

Luke dodged the question.

“Why do you harass me every night?” he asked. “When everyone else ignores me—”

“It’s the procedure we developed for dealing with new boys,” jackal boy said. “And new girls, over at Harlow School for Girls. We’ve discovered it’s hard for shadow children when they first come out of hiding — they’re overwhelmed, traumatized. Think about it. They’ve spent their whole lives thinking it’s death to be seen, and suddenly they’re expected to interact with others all day long, to sit through classes with dozens of other kids, behave normally. They freak out.”

“Did you?” Luke asked, trying to picture jackal boy as the new kid, just come out of hiding, scared of everything. Hisimagination failed him.

“Me?” Jackal boy sounded surprised. “Sure. It was tough. The problem was, lots of exnays got so panicked, they’d do something really dumb — stand up and chant their real name, start screaming, ‘Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!’—you know, totally lose it Now, Hendricks has a lot of disturbed kids, anyway—”

“It does?” Luke asked.

“Haven’t you noticed?” Jackal boy sounded amazed. “The autistic kids — the ones who rock and won’t look you in the eye — the phobic kids, we’ve got all sorts of troubled cases in there. Ever meet Rolly Sturgeon? There’s a psycho for you. So exnays can get away with some pretty wacky behavior at Hendricks. But the Population Police still got in a few good raids. That’s why a lot of us exnays got together and planned it all out. Every time a new kid arrives, we go into emergency mode until we can tell if he’s an exnay or not We watch. We protect.” Luke remembered the hands pushing him down into the chair that first day, in his first class. “But we do it all in secret. We give the exnay plenty of breathing room. And we pick just one person to approach him. To be a friend.” Luke thought about having to chant, “I am a fonrol” fifty times, of having to do push-ups while everyone else laughed, of having to obey every single one of jackal boy’s sarcastic commands.

“I thought friends were supposed to be nice to you,” Luke said bitterly “Maybe that’s a word I don’t understand, either.”

“Being too nice to an exnay from the start only causes trouble,” jackal boy said. “They break down. They get weepy. They’re so happy to find a sympathetic ear that they tell everything, no matter who else can hear. No, exnays need the kind of friend who can toughen them up. Like I did for you.”

Was that what had happened? Luke felt as overwhelmed and confused as he had his first day at Hendricks. Listening to jackal boy was like it used to be listening to Jen: They were both so sure of themselves, it was hard for Luke to figure out what he thought on his own.

“How can you tell if a new kid is an exnay or not?” Luke asked, stalling.

“We give them a test,” jackal boy said. “When they’re ready, we leave a door open and make sure they see it, we stare them right in the eye — we know exactly how an exnay would respond, compared with a typical agoraphobe, or a typical autistic kid.”

“You’ve got everyone figured out, huh?” Luke said.

“Sure,” jackal boy asked. “Can’t you tell?”

Luke couldn’t answer that question. He was feeling panicky again. In a minute, he was going to have to make a decision. With Jen, it had been easy — he’d trusted her right away. But he was older now, more suspicious. He knew that she had been betrayed.

And he could be, too.

“So you gave me the usual test,” he said tentatively “Did I pass?”

“Depends on what you call passing,” jackal boy said. He sounded cagier now, like he wasn’t sure whose side Luke was on.

Luke had run out of questions. Or — he had lots of questions, but none of them would help him decide whether to trust jackal boy and his friends with his secret It would be so nice to be able to tell. But was it worth risking his life for?

Had he already risked his life by following them into the woods?

Luke didn’t like thinking things like that. He missed Jen all of a sudden. She was always good at turning his fear into a joke.

“Did you know Jen?” he asked jackal boy abruptly.

“Jen?” jackal boy said, his voice suddenly exuberant “Jen Talbot? You knew her, too?”

Luke nodded. “She was my, um, neighbor. I went over to her house whenever I could,” he said.

“Wow,” jackal boy breathed. “Come onl”.

He grabbed Luke’s arm and pulled him back through the woods, all the time marveling, “I can’t believe you really met her. In person. It’s incredible. She’s legendary, you know—”

The low-hanging tree limbs didn’t seem so frightening now Luke and jackal boy simply ducked. Together. A couple times jackal boy held a branch out of the way so Luke could go first. A couple times Luke returned the favor. Jackal boy kept rushing Luke along. They burst back into the clearing where everyone else was still sitting, not even talking. They appeared to have nothing to do but wait for jackal boy

“Listen, you all!” jackal boy announced. ‘This is unbelievable! He knew Jen. He went to her house and everything!”

There was a flurry of questions—”What was she like?” “Did she tell you about the rally?” “How did you know her?” Someone produced a bag of cookies and they all passed it around, like it was a party.

It was a party. It was a party where they were accepting Luke into their group. Just because he knew Jen.

Luke did his best to answer all the questions.

“Jen was — amazing,” he said. “She wasn’t scared of anything. Not the Population Police, not the Government, not anyone. Not even her parents.” Luke thought about how strange it was that Jen’s father worked for the Population Police. Mr. Talbot was like a double agent, trying to help third children instead of killing them. But he hadn’t been able to prevent his own daughter’s death. He’d just barely managed to keep the Population Police from finding out that she had been his daughter.

Luke didn’t want to talk about Jen’s death, just her life.

“She spent months planning the rally,” he said. “It was her statement, ‘I deserve to exist We deserve to exist’ She wanted as many third children there as possible. Out of hiding. She thought the Government would have to listen. She took everyone to the steps of the president’s house…” Luke remembered the fight they’d had when he’d refused to go. And how she’d forgiven him. He stopped talking, lost in grief

“The Government killed everyone at the rally,” Nina finished for him.

Luke nodded blindly. He couldn’t ignore Jen’s death. He choked out, “Jen was a true hero. She was the bravest person I’ll ever know. And someday — someday everyone will know about her.”

The others nodded solemnly. They know how I feel, Luke marveled. And then, in spite of his grief, he felt a shot of joy: I am one of them. I belong.

After that, somehow, he was able to tell happy stories about Jen. He had the whole crowd laughing when he described how Jen had dusted for his fingerprints the first time he’d gone to her house.

“She wanted to make sure I was..“ Luke hesitated. He had been about to say “another shadow child, like her.” But that wasn’t how he wanted to reveal his secret, just letting it slip out like it didn’t matter. He finished lamely, “She wanted to make sure I was who I said I was.”

“So,” jackal boy said, lounging against a tree. “Who are you, anyway? What’s your real name, ‘Lee’?”

Luke looked at the circle of faces surrounding him. Jackal boy’s question had silenced the laughter. Or maybe it was Luke’s sudden stammering. Now everyone was watching Luke expectantly. An owl hooted somewhere deeper in the woods, and it was like a signal. Finally It was time to tell.

“L—” Luke started. But the word stuck in his throat All those nights he’d whispered his name, all those times he’d longed to speak his name aloud — and now he couldn’t.

Some of the dry cookie crumbs slid back on his tongue and he started coughing, choking. One of the other boys had to pound him on the back before Luke got his breath back.

“Lee Grant,” Luke said, as soon as he could speak again. His urge to confess was gone. “My name is Lee Grant”

“Sure,” jackal boy kidded him. “Whatever you say”

And then Luke felt foolish. Jackal boy had revealed his real name. Why couldn’t Luke reveal his?

Because, Luke thought with a chill, I didn’t decide to belong. Jackal boy decided for me.